Gaming's biggest movie rip-offs

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Okay, so we can't go too hard on this one, seeing as how a) It's clearly made up of highly affectionate intentional movie parodies, and b) one or two of our editors areheavily obsessed with the TS2. But really, the Timesplitters series probably contains more blatant movie acquisitions than any other game out there. There are little cinematic nods scattered almost everywhere, but a few examples are particularly noteworthy.

The first level of TS2 takes place in and around a snowbound dam, clearly referring to both the movie and game versions of Goldeneye, the latter of which several Free Radical staff worked on while still at Rare. Then of course, there's the Neo Tokyo level, which far from being the Akira parody you might expect, is actually a remarkably accurate and respectful recreation of Bladerunner's LA, right down to the flying police cars and melancholic atmosphere of rain and tainted neon. Additionally, the soundtrack is the most perfect pastiche of Vangelis' score you could ever want to escape copyright infringement with.

And the third game, Timesplitters: Future Perfect, features a future war against a machine army that would have made a better Terminator 3 than Terminator 3. Okay, so to be fair, a small piece of cheese would have made a better Terminator 3 than Terminator 3 did. But still...

The first level of TS2 takes place in and around a snowbound dam, clearly referring to both the movie and game versions of Goldeneye, the latter of which several Free Radical staff worked on while still at Rare. Then of course, there's the Neo Tokyo level, which far from being the Akira parody you might expect, is actually a remarkably accurate and respectful recreation of Bladerunner's LA, right down to the flying police cars and melancholic atmosphere of rain and tainted neon. Additionally, the soundtrack is the most perfect pastiche of Vangelis' score you could ever want to escape copyright infringement with.

And the third game, Timesplitters: Future Perfect, features a future war against a machine army that would have made a better Terminator 3 than Terminator 3. Okay, so to be fair, a small piece of cheese would have made a better Terminator 3 than Terminator 3 did. But still...